About the Museum

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The virtualMuseum primarily exists to display and document pieces of East Timorese traditional textiles, known commonly as tais.

The Museum DOES NOT OWN any tais. It relies on gaining permission to display images of pieces owned by other institutions or individuals, including collections held by "bricks and mortar" museums and galleries. Through the images and the documentation, the Museum will make an increasingly complete story accessible to the peoples of East Timor (particularly the women weavers), to textile collectors, and to those interested in East Timor in general.

Tais are an essential part of many of the traditional activities of East Timorese people, and their designs represent important stories, records and beliefs. The virtualMuseum features not just images of the tais themselves, but also information on the social and cultural context. East Timor, as a newly independent nation, is likely to have a period of rapid cultural change, thus the Museum includes contemporary materials.

Old or important tais are needed to enable the authentication, documentation and preservation of traditional materials, designs, colours, motifs etc as the basis for the development of high quality products in the future. However, these important tais are the very pieces that have been and are still being bought for private collections and for resale outside East Timor. The virtualMuseum will seek permissions to display older cloths, and thus help make their cultural background more widely accessible.

The virtualMuseum came into being in late 2001, within a few months and at very low cost, thanks to the efforts of people who have donated their labour without charge.

Assistance is being sought from the Australian National Gallery, the Museum and Gallery of the Northern Territory, and sources in Europe and elsewhere to provide more images and more complete documentation, including documentation of the social and cultural context of individual pieces. Technical advice is being requested from the Australian National Gallery or a similar institution on the requirements for the preservation and appropriate storage of pieces acquired. Data and graphics for the Museum are held in a technical database based on that used by the National Gallery of Australia.

The virtualMuseum is workable only by having a network of supporters. It encourages interested persons with relevant expertise to contribute corrections, comments and longer papers that can be published in our Stories of the Cloths section. We have in our plans a moderated discussion forum that would contribute to the development of knowledge on tais in East Timor.